Here's today's sunrise.

What you can't see are two exasperated black dogs sitting a few feet away, sighing LOUDLY as they wait for me to get the shot.

Of the 200-plus trailers here in Paradise Cove, just a few remain untouched. In the lower section of the park, actual travel trailers once towed behind station wagons were parked and, over time, turned into tiny cottages. On the upper level, original trailers with names like "Meteor" and "Golden Mansion" were slowly transformed. First came aluminum siding, then new windows and doors. Additions were built, newer and bigger trailers were hauled onto the sites and, most recently, full-on houses were constructed on top of each old trailer's chassis.

Here's one of the last untouched trailers in the Cove. There's the ribbed metal exterior, still the original green, the carpeted stairs, the canted car port, the aluminum windows, the covered porch.

An elderly couple used to live here. You'd see them in the morning, walking arm in arm. You could see them in the house in the evenings, the curtains open, the lights on. Her harp stood in the center of the room. His books filled the shelves that lined the walls. They're gone now and, inevitably, the trailer will change.

I'm glad I got this shot of it though, a tiny piece of Cove lore that can still live on.

In the morning, before there's even much light, there's color. A kind of low, slow rose that comes humming down the beach, turns the sand a little pink, bounces off the bluff. Out at sea, a horizon packed with clouds, slate gray, reflecting water. No traffic, unless you count the gulls, their wing beats an alto thud in the still, chill air.

First, I've got a post up on Native Intelligence.

Now, the Malibu Pie Festival of 2008. Nice crowd:

Lots and lots of offerings in the silent auction:

And my pie, despite scorching a bit in my 1950s O'Keefe & Merritt oven, got a third-place ribbon. Then, at six bucks a slice, it sold out! (Full disclosure -- I bought two of those slices.)

Pies to judge, pies to eat, minor celebs to oogle (yes, I know the word is actually 'ogle') and a silent auction -- it's our annual autumnal rite, the Malibu Pie Festival.

I'm entering, as usual, an apple pie. (Full disclosure: blue ribbon in '06, 3rd place in '07). As usual, I bought the fruit at See Canyon at the Santa Monica farmer's market. They've got varieties of apples I've never heard of, apples so fragrant, apples so oddly shaped, apples with flavors so rich and complex that supermarket apples will never be anything more than fourth-rate.

The church that throws this shindig each year doesn't host a pie contest web site, so here's the info from the LA Times. I'll be the one hovering anxiously around the judging table, trying to read lips.

A friend of mine, who inspects houses as they're being built, has been hearing from contractors on the sites she visits that thieves are breaking into locked sheds and cleaning them out, making off with tens of thousands of dollars worth of hand tools and power tools and construction materials.

Some contractors have hired guards, others are using dogs. Here's an inspired solution I came across on one of my walks -- the tempting tool chest held safely out of reach.

Yesterday, Maisie fetched a bedroom slipper. Today she delivered Santa. Stay tuned.

If you live up one of the canyons here in Malibu and, in the bleary light of dawn, you thought you saw a freakishly small and extremely happy black lab slip into your bedroom and grab one of your pink and fluffy slippers, well, I don't know anything about it.

This long.

I'm watching this battle over a bailout plan and can't help wishing there had been half this much debate, even a fraction of the shoving and sifting and second guessing when our lawmakers voted to invade Iraq.